Famously depicted as ‘Crookback Dick’, and as Shakespeare’s ‘bunch-back’d toad’, the murderer of the Princes in the Tower and the warrior vanquished at the Battle of Bosworth Field, Richard III is one of England’s most enigmatic monarchs. Now, with the discovery of Richard’s bones under a car park in Leicester in 2012 and their reburial […]
This book takes the highly contentious position among historians that the Holy Roman Empire (http://www.encyclopedia.com/history/modern-europe/german-history/holy-roman-empire) was a stable and successful political structure. It is presented as a thematic history of the Empire from its medieval origins to its demise in 1806. In the first of four sections, ‘Ideal’, Peter Wilson shows the power of the imperial ambition:
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Many people, including myself, who have visited the battlefield of Culloden report being underwhelmed. It amounts to little more than a rickle of stones on a heather moor. The battle itself in 1746 had lasted less than an hour, and the forces on each side were small, even by the standards of the day. The
Culloden by Murray Pittock Read More »
Midnight tonight (31 December 2016) will be one moment in the continuing flow of time, no different essentially from any other. Only because human societies are organised by collective effort, and require punctuation marks in their narratives, midnight will be made significant. The calendar will change to a new year. There will be fireworks, sentimentality,
Timekeepers by Simon Garfield Read More »
The SAS was the brainchild of David Stirling, a languid young Scottish aristocrat. With difficulty he persuaded General Claude Auchinleck, the 8th Army commander in WW 2, to approve a mobile force operating behind enemy lines. The plan was to disrupt communications and infiltrate aerodromes to destroy planes on the ground. He gathered a motley
This book was first published on 4th August 2016. 96 days later Donald Trump was elected President of The United States. For all that time, and ever since Trump had secured the nomination, the Democrats and the ruling elites around the world were smugly confident that a clown like Trump could never be elected. Their
White Trash by Nancy Isenberg Read More »
2017 will be a significant year for readers of history, particularly religious history. It will be 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Church door at Wittenberg in Saxony. For convenience, the event in 1517 is taken to be the start of what came to be known as ‘The Protestant Reformation’.
The idea of some kind of representative democracy has taken root in these damp islands of ours many centuries ago. Arguably, the long struggle against absolute tryranny began with Magna Carta in 1215. Anyone with the faintest understanding of that history is enraged by the complacency of individuals who can’t be bothered to vote. It is
The Romanovs: 1613-1918 Read More »
Sometimes a new history book receives so many plaudits and commendations from a variety of sources that it would be remiss not to read it. Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads: A New History of the World is one such. It’s a reasonable assessment that Lanark is not the centre of the world. That being granted, has there
